A short review of Bo Peabody's life to date will indicate why he titled his book as he did.

In 1991, a freshman at Williams College, he had an idea for an online service offering "real-life" education to college students: practical advice about jobs, personal finance, and health.

During Peabody's sophomore year Dick Sabot, one of his professors, agreed to work with Peabody on his idea, not because he thought it was a good idea but because he'd had a near-death experience during which he'd heard a voice tell him to do "something different."

By 1994, when Peabody graduated, the project had morphed into an internet start-up company they named Tripod.

Peabody graduated with ordinary grades, and realized his job prospects weren't all that good, so he decided to stick with Tripod a while longer.

Borrowing money from friends and family, he hired a team of computer programmers because he had no computer skills.

Unbeknownst to Peabody, the programmers built a piece of software on Tripod that had nothing to do with offering practical advice to anyone.

Rather, it gave individuals the power to publish their own personal homepages.

By 1995, the Tripod Homepage Builder was wildly popular.

In November 1995, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a venture capital firm, agreed to look at Tripod only because Dick Sabot's wife's brother's college roommate knew someone at NEA.

They gave Tripod $3 million in financing.

By mid-1997, Tripod had nearly one million registered members.

Tripod had never posted a profit and barely generated any revenue.

On December 30, 1997 Peabody was offered $58 million for Tripod.

On December 31, 1997 he sold it for $58 million to Lycos.

He agreed to a lockup that forbade him to sell all of his stock until two years had elapsed.

During the next two years the value of his stock increased tenfold, to over $500 million.

By December 31, 1999, at the height of the internet bubble and just a few months before the market crashed, he'd sold nearly all of his Lycos stock, investing it in bonds and real estate.